Week Two

Yeah, so it’s Friday afternoon and I’m sort of stuck for things to do until 6pm (There’s some kind of Chinese thing going on and apparently they have free food so we’re going over there) so I figured I’d update the blog. Especially as I haven’t since last Thursday.

It was the first real week of courses so I’ve been slightly busy going to lectures and seminars. It’s mostly been introductions to what we’ll be going over during the next 10 weeks, so it hasn’t been too strenuous, really. Especially as I only have three subjects. Monday was just two lectures – UK State Politics and Policies and Youth and Political Culture in 1960s Europe – UK State Politics only went for twenty minutes so wasn’t even worth going to. But now I also have a seminar for it on Wednesday mornings. Then there was just one workshop on Tuesday for Northern Ireland History, Politics & Society, and another lecture for Youth & Political Culture on Thursday afternoon. It’s a pretty good timetable, really. I’m not fussed about there being stuff on every day because it’s not a massive hassle to get to classes. Especially as a few are held in the seminar rooms about 2 minutes walk from the flat. They all seem pretty interesting, at least. I’ve done the reading for the UK and Ireland subjects and I think I need to do some extra background reading just to make sure I know who’s who in the political systems but it doesn’t seem to be too hard (yet).

The Lake District on Sunday was beautiful. I thought it would rain but it didn’t, so was all warm and sunny. We even went hiking up to the top of a waterfall.




It was like a tropical rainforest in there. Felt like it too, as I was wearing my jacket. I was sure it was going to rain! Good thing we stopped at a pub on the way back. I almost fell asleep on the bus.

Haven’t done much else this week, really. I managed to do a load of laundry, which I was quite proud of. Nothing shrank or melted or blew up so I count that as an achievement. I still haven’t cooked yet, but am planning to this weekend. I’m going to go into Lancaster tomorrow and get some supplies to make a pasta sauce. I was originally going to do it on Tuesday, but I had no tomatoes and only one saucepan, so making the sauce and cooking pasta at the same time would have been a little difficult. Seeing as there’s been a few Taiwanese dishes cooked so far (we had these pancakey things last night – they had spring onion in and were very good indeed), I figured it only fair to do something myself.

I finally got to try salmiakki. It’s a sort of liquorice from Finland that’s salty (it has ammonium chloride in it) and one variant tastes faintly of menthol. It’s awesome. It reminds me of that Dutch (I think it was Dutch) liquorice that had a white sugar shell, as well as liquorice flavour Mentos. Which makes sense, as the liquorice Mentos had ‘lakrits’ on it, and I believe that’s Finnish (maybe Swedish) for liquorice! The circle is complete. Anyway, it’s really nice stuff. As is Finnish chocolate (especially the sort with salmiakki in).

That’s about it for now, I think. As I said, there’s some kind of Chinese thing happening tonight with free food on offer. And my friend has just arrived, so bye!